Two hours later, they were both showered, dressed and drinking gin and tonic, a poor version of it with no ice and no lemon – none to be found – but it was better than no drink at all. They were sitting blamelessly and respectably in the living room, chatting about their worlds and the people they’d known, and there was so much to talk about, so much to say, and Dan was now detailing the current state of his Sheffield family with such spin and colour that Ali felt she still knew them. But he hardly saw his parents, he said, and this weighed on his conscience, not that he did anything about that. ‘Trouble is I don’t like going. It’s a time warp, I’m forever a sullen teenager in Nether Edge. Nothing’s changed in that house, except Mum talks even more, and Dad talks even less.’

‘Does he still have his pigeons?’

Dan shook his head. ‘He had a long spell in hospital ten years ago and Mum couldn’t cope. She sold them all, without telling him.’

Ali was horror-struck at this. ‘Those beautiful birds,’ she said. ‘Didn’t Marion realise how he loved them?’

‘She’d wanted rid for years. Hated the smell of ’em, and she got into gardening and wanted the shed for the usual stuff people keep – y’know, spades and shears and whatnot. He was in hospital for the best part of a year, and he wasn’t himself, he withdrew, and I think she assumed he’d just not notice, but actually, I think she might have unwittingly destroyed his one chance of rehabilitation. He seems to have been sad for a very long time now, my dad.’

‘Poor old Bill,’ Ali said. She thought about that pigeon loft. It’d felt a little like sitting in a church, a church with a congregation of birds. It’d had a holy quality to it; at least, that’s what she remembered. Perhaps, she thought, the passing of time had elevated it in her mind.

‘When were you last in Sheffield?’ Dan asked, and immediately he wished he hadn’t, because she stared at him with an expression that clearly questioned whether he’d listened to anything at all of what she’d told him.

‘OK, right, you’ve never been back?’ he said, trying to keep his voice level, so she couldn’t hear the incredulity. Jesus, he thought, that was one hell of a bolt you did there, girl. Ali still didn’t answer, just looked at him.

‘I didn’t realise,’ he said. ‘I thought perhaps you’d have gone back to see Peter … show the girls Sheffield …’ He petered out. ‘I’ll shut the fuck up,’ he said.

Ali said, ‘No, I never went back. I’ve never even spoken of it, until today. Don’t you understand that?’

‘Never told Michael? None of it?’